Nisennenmondai

Remember Y2K? Planes were going to be falling from the sky, landing on nuclear power stations that were melting down while the world's entire financial system would be lying in tatters. Those who didn't die in the computer assisted carnage would have to fight for their survival in a post-Apocalyptic world familiar to us all from years of films like Mad Max and Escape From New York, haunted by marauding gangs of mutants, escaped convicts, thugs, buggerers, and Methodists (see, they weren't just films, they were public service guides training us for the future). We all now know that it was nothing more that an elaborate ruse by IT people to ensure that they could charge immorally high rates for just turning on your computer and pretending to make it Y2 compliant, an act that mysteriously involved them playing Solitaire for five minutes before buggering off and leaving you with a bill for a couple of hundred quid. Nothing happened, midnight approached, we held our breaths and puckered up for what we all thought might be one final kiss before all hell broke loose, the bells rang and all of a sudden it was 2000. We looked out the window but there were no falling planes, bank machines still worked (and only gave out twenties), and the only marauding gangs were the usual drunken punters trying to find a taxi driver to take them home (and only charge them slightly less than the IT guy had done).

If everything had gone tits up then today Nisennenmondai (Y2K Problem) would be the soundtrack of our miserable lives, blazing out of our hand-cranked radios and scaring off the Methodists. In their own words Nisennenmondai are:

3piace girls band from tokyo japan since 1999.
　nisennenmondai mean "computer bug problem".
　"bijin record"since 2006 are self rabel.
　"bijin" mean butiful man and women.

　G-takada　B-zaikawa　D-himeno

This doesn't even begin to tell you what they are. Click on the link above and listen to the two songs on their MySpace profile and you'll see that they're much more than this. Tribal drums, relentlessly repetitive sheets of guitar noise, sudden unexpected changes of tempo, brief moments of relative quiet that allow the band and the listener a moment of respite before the eye passes over and we're plunged gladly back into the maelstrom. If the Four Horsemen have iPods this band are on their on-the-go playlist. I'm listening to these slabs of noise on my laptop and they sound and feel Satanically good - I can only imagine what they are like live. I've contacted the band to find out if they've got any shows coming up and I'll post any info I get. As good as the recorded songs are I imagine this is a band that are at their best live. Here's hoping they're playing soon.